Reflections on culture and ideas by author and illustrator Christopher Taylor

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Thursday, September 25, 2014

ALL THAT STUFF

"Does he still stand for truth, justice, all that stuff?"
-Perry White, Superman Returns

The Communists in Russia must be gnashing their teeth in frustration and dismay. If only they'd held out a little bit longer, they must be thinking. Their ideological efforts and continuous work to undermine the west finally took fruit, mere decades after the humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European bloc.

It has to be amazing for them to see how quickly and completely their efforts have taken root in the United States. Things that were completely rejected and even mocked have become common knowledge and are stated by the highest politicians in the land. Things once understood to be absolute truth are not showered with contempt and taught as lies by the education system.

But there's also a chance that the collapse of the Soviet Union as an enemy allowed their ideas to flourish where they would have before been blocked because of their origins. It has long been a source of annoyance to me that while Nazism is rightly condemned as a horrific ideology of monsters, Communism is treated as historically flawed but noble and positive.

At their roots, both worked out extremely similar in economic and social effect, as I've written before. Nazism was heavily socialist and Communism never was implemented, only tyrannical socialism as a "precursor" to the inevitable change over that never took place.

Its bizarre to see in my lifetime how swiftly the transformation of culture took place. In just under a decade, the reversal is almost complete. You can see it take place by watching long run TV series back to back on services like Netflix. The first seasons of shows like Law and Order were strongly American and had a basic Judeo-Christian foundation, unashamedly showing portrayals of faith not only without criticism but usually as positive. Today, they openly mock and attack both concepts. You can see in shows such as Criminal Minds the shift in ideology that took place between 2004 and 2006, where suddenly America was bad and everything that ever went wrong originated in Republicans and the religious right. Its almost like there was a deliberate, agreed upon switch in worldview.

There are some basic leftist concepts that people often agree to now without even being aware of their origins. All of these came from hard core Communist/Marxist/Maoist thinkers. All of them were openly and undebatedly Communist in origin and used to be immediately identified as such. All of them are becoming cultural norms today (many taken from this site, courtesy American Digest):

There is no truth, only competing agendas.

All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

Religion should be only internal and have no impact on culture or others

The purpose of education is to shape politically useful citizens

These aren't even debated any more in many places. Merely questioning them is treated with a shower of contempt and rage by some people, particularly in academia. They form such a foundational worldview for many people that they aren't even questioned, where as just a few decades ago they were the doctrine of the enemy.

All of these can easily be traced back to revolutionary Marxist thinkers such as Gramsci and the Communist Party in USSR, which - according to KGB documents and testimony - were being pushed in the US by paid agents of the Soviet Union. Their theory was that if you were able to undermine basic American ideology, the strength of the nation - its "can do" attitude, its rugged individualism, its praise of ambition and achievement, and its rejection of authority undermining liberty could all be rotted from inside and eliminated, leaving only an open door for Communism to flourish.

Communists figured out early that they were going to get no foothold in America until that basic American Way was demolished so badly even Superman comics would be ashamed to mention it. Until that core of Americanism was gone, they came to understand that Communism would never, ever get a foothold and that inevitable "revolution of the working class" would never happen.

Now, an objective observer might have said "well guys, it looks like they found another way and it certainly seems to be working" but for these Communist thinkers, it was religious zeal, not logic that ran their thought processes. If another way was found, then it was a bad way by definition for being different than Communism.

So this was the effort, and the bits listed above (among others) were the tools to bring this about. They didn't even have to be true or believed, they just had to be effective at undermining Americanism as a worldview. All those trappings of Judeo Christian heritage, all that objective, absolute thinking, all that individualism and can-do attitude had to be cleared away for subjectivism, subservience to the state, and dependence.

There aren't many people who are even aware of that history or the purpose. There never were. There were many "useful idiots" who went along because it felt right, or was more comfortable for them personally - daunted by independence and ambition. And for many, it was simply a way to get along with their colleagues, who were glassy eyed in their zealotry.

You see it again and again today on social media. People cringingly avoid certain topics, because they know the response will be screaming vitriol, a shotgun of different topics showered down with ALL CAPS and angry repetition, until its impossible to respond. Every topic is thrown off its path, every discussion turns into angry yelling. Friends are lost, followers drop off, and people just begin to stop bringing things up or the 2 year olds throw another tantrum.

So the 2 year olds win the debate, by forcing any discussion into silence. They get to puke whatever they wish onto the discussion and people look away and keep their responses to themselves... and the unchallenged assertions begin to become common knowledge. The truth, if it ever comes, comes far too late to matter. So we get 2 terms of President Obama despite just about everyone knowing, deep down, that the guy really isn't fit for the job.

Look over that list again, scan down it. Is any of that new to you? If you haven't seen it worded like that, you've almost certainly encountered it in one form or another. Its why when a Muslim attacks a cop in Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the next day puts out a headline warning against backlash against beleaguered Muslims. Its why racism is the first accusation any time you question something President Obama does. Its why, of all nations on earth, America is the only one not permitted in public to be proud or loving toward its heritage and existence.

Ask a Frenchman about France and his eyes grow misty, his chest swells and he sounds proud of his land like a lover. Ask a Brit about his home and he'll crack wise and wink, but deep down he loves his land and defends it against all comers.

Ask an American, and he'll try not to sound too patriotic to avoid being mocked or triggering one of those tantrums from a leftist.

This transformation is astounding to me. Its hard to believe it has happened so fast and so effectively. I doubt even a large minority of actual Americans buy into most of this crap, but they've been conditioned, taught, and pressured into repeating them publicly. Topics like homosexual "marriage" are in the same category: I have to respond this way even though deep down I know its ridiculous and even disgusting.

What's the most frustrating to me is seeing how completely even people on the right are buying into this vomit. They'll repeat all the conservative basics on government and economics, but when it comes to social issues, suddenly they start reading off the CPUSA talking points. And even in economics and government, they're beginning to seep a bit of red in their speech.

How this took place I can only speculate on. Its clear that 100 years of continuous effort to infiltrate and subsume cultural and educational parts of life have begun to blossom and take fruit at an accelerated rate. Its also clear that as of 2004, the establishment left decided a full court press was required to stop any Republican from winning office ever again, in entertainment, news, academia, and beyond. But why its worked seems beyond historical or logical application.

There are signs of hope. The internet is so free and capable of countering these ideas through surprising means that the wall of Gramscian thought has been chipped away repeatedly. Its as if only through continuous, full strength effort the left can stave off America's nature, and every so often light breaks through where a finger spread too wide.

And certainly all those home schooled kids, military vets, and reactionary right in church and radio have taken their toll on the left's push. But any turnaround that takes place will be far down the road, and increasingly looks like only after some significant damage done to the nation and economy, if not collapse.

All we can do is live our lives the best we can, try to show by example and precept what is right, teach our children, shield them from the most potent agents of corruption, and keep working. Right now they hold all the cards, and perhaps for the foreseeable future they will continue to win.

As a Christian I know in the end, the good and the true and the beautiful will win. But the road to get there will be a pretty winding and rocky one.